The fifth- and sixth-best students in the German selection round for the IChO are the reserve candidates for the four-person IChO team in case of emergencies. Starting in 2008 the FChO, together with the IPN, has been organizing research internships all over the world in order to acknowledge these students' outstanding achievement in the selection round. The offer has been extended to the seventh-best student from 2009 on. In these four week internships, the students take part in the hosting group's research and are thus able to get a lot of scientific, personal and cultural experience.

In the past years, students could choose from five groups, mainly led by former Chemistry Olympiad participants. Internships took place in Göteborg (Sweden), Nashville (USA), Oxford (United Kingdom), and Zürich (Switzerland). Their subjects cover the entire field of chemistry - structure predictions and mass spectrometric analyses of proteins, synthesis of solids by microwaves, electron pair magnetic resonance (EPR) and even surface plasmons in metal nano-particles.